Sarah Borges continuing tradition with Thanksgiving shows

Sunday

Nov 23, 2008 at 12:01 AMNov 23, 2008 at 10:03 PM

Another year almost down, and Taunton-bred Sarah Borges keeps climbing.

Another year almost down, and Taunton-bred Sarah Borges keeps climbing.

The success of 2007’s “Diamonds in the Dark” brought her onto national music radars, and she and the Broken Singles attempted to strike with that hot iron and make headway into a number of markets this year, including the West Coast, Midwest and Europe.

The year hasn’t been without changes, either; at the end of the summer, the Broken Singles bid farewell to guitarist/pedal steel ace Mike Castellana and welcomed guitarist Lyle Brewer into the fold.

The Patriot Ledger caught up with Borges as she prepares for her annual hometown Thanksgiving shows in Boston and Fall River.

Sarah Borges: This is kind of becoming a thing with us, huh?

Patriot Ledger: Well, hey, we have to keep tabs on our homegrown talents before they trade giving us the time of day for international superstardom, don’t you know.

SB: From your lips to God’s ears!

PL: Seriously, it sounds like it’s been quite a year for you. Let’s start with your lineup change.

SB: Yeah, Mike left us to go start a family, which we can’t exactly blame him for. But Lyle, he’s from Andover so now we’ve got two Massachusetts-ians in the band, and he’s doing a great job. We had to initiate him really fast, but he’s so good at what he does and he fit right in. The vibe is great. We all give each other such a hard time in this band, and he’s completely sarcastic and witty, too. He started getting tattoos the week he joined. Plus, the ladies love him.

PL: And the Broken Singles have a new album on the way?

SB: Yes indeed. It’s called “The Stars Are Out” and it comes out March 24 on Sugar Hill. It’s a different record for us – there’s no pedal steel and it’s more rock and more pop. We’re trying to explore. We’re not getting too far away from our alt-country roots, but put another way, I don’t think there’s much on [the album] over three-and-a-half minutes. We had a couple of new songs that we’ve been putting into the shows, and new covers, like we always do.

PL: You’ve always been savvy about cover choices. Stuff that on paper wouldn’t be the most obvious choice but in the end sound right in your wheelhouse.

SB: We try, we try. We must have learned so many songs, and we had a month to make the record so there’s a lot that’s out there – lots of B-sides. One is “Being With You” by Smokey Robinson. I loved it when I was kid and I brought it in to see what we could do with it. Then there’s a song by Any Trouble, a British band from the 80s that I really like.

PL: Is there a link between those songs?

SB: Overall we tried to pick songs that meant something to us, not just covering songs to cover them. We also looked at a Magnetic Fields album, “69 Love Songs” [a triple album from 1999] and we took one of the more obscure ones on there, added some strings and made it nice. Then, I was a huge, huge fan of Boston rock bands like Throwing Muses and Morphine, and also the Lemonheads. We do a Lemonheads song and Paul [Q. Kolderie, famed producer and engineer at Camp Street Studios] was saying ‘It’s like deja vu,’ because he worked on the original, too.

PL: You’ve been on the road a lot this year. What have you learned from so much touring?

SB: We played so many shows this year, and all kinds of venues. Typically we’re in a loud rock club where there’s always something crazy that happens – someone will climb on a table or, like one time this year, someone will hop on stage and try to play with us who doesn’t know how to play a guitar. But as we get into sets all we have left toward the end is the slow songs. I tend to be mindful of that more and we’re trying – and Binky and I were just discussing this – to keep the energy up.

PL: Any particular shows stand out from 2008, for whatever reason?

SB: A lot of them, but I’ll go with Seattle for starters, because Seattle has always been my nemesis. The last few times we went I was sick, or something happened, or we just generally had an off-night, but in September we went back and we beat the living thing out of it. It was great. We did a few shows this year in Germany, too, and people told me beforehand that German audiences were more sedate. I didn’t find that to be the case at all. We had good crowds, and they were crazy.

PL: I remember back in January at the Lizard Lounge you premiered a video for “Stop and Think it Over.” Are there more videos on the way?

SB: Maybe we’ll make another one for this record – we have lots and lots of tour footage and recorded footage – but we’ll need some help to pull out some good stuff. We get lazy when we’re off the road. There are lots of good videos of us on YouTube now, though; go check out a show we did in Austin, Texas, with James McMurtry.

PL: Are you going to be touring with as much vigor in the next few months and the new year? Are there particular markets you’re looking to open up?

SB: We’re trying not to play too much more just yet. We have a short tour with the Blasters and then the hometown shows and then we’re done for the year, and then early in [2009] we’re looking at the Midwest again.